Need to develop G&J clusters: Prabhu

The Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council’s first-ever two-day national summit India Gold & Jewellery Summit. Key members of the industry gathered at a common platform to debate and discuss various issues for evolving a national policy for gold and the gem & jewellery sector. Union Minister of Commerce & Industry Suresh Prabhu and Rita Teaotia (Secretary – Union Ministry of Commerce & Industry, GOI) participated the inaugural session of the summit.

“The Government would work closely with all industry bodies and would come up with a policy framework which will make Industry to grow further. The objective is to focus on overall growth of the industry thereby boosting exports and creating jobs. The ministry would back GJEPC to achieve PM Modi’s dream of India becoming the world’s largest G&J hub by 2022 to generate $22bn revenue from exports,” said Suresh Prabhu at GJEPC's first ever India Gold & Jewellery Summit held in New Delhi recently.

“There is also a need to develop G&J clusters and asked the industry forum to involve state ministers and make them as partners for creating such clusters. Every village in India has a goldsmith. Then why don’t we have an institutional mechanism to utilize the skill-set of these abundance of human resource that we have. They can be nurtured with skill sets,” Prabhu observed.

In his welcome address, Praveenshankar Pandya, Chairman, GJEPC, said, “India needs a national policy governing all aspects of the Gems and Jewellery sector including Gold considering the potential of the sector’s growth and employment potential. The sector employs over 2.5 million workers and contributes to 6% - 7% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country besides being an important foreign exchange earner.”

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